Page 20 of Vance

The courthouse is everything I expected and nothing I could have prepared for. It’s a sterile, beige building, with fluorescent lights that hum overhead and echo off linoleum floors polished to a mirror shine. There are no flowers. No music. No grand staircase. Nothing remotely resembling the kind of wedding people in love spend months planning. Just paperwork, witnesses, and a judge waiting to make our arrangement legally binding.

I check my watch. Three minutes late. The delay irritates me more than it should, a prickle of impatience beneath my skin. I’m not a man who tolerates inefficiency, yet here I am, standing in a hallway that smells of industrial cleaner and stale cheap coffee, waiting for a ceremony I orchestrated myself.

Sophia stands beside me in the perfect white silk sheath she chose at the boutique. The dress fits her perfectly, clinging to her without being ostentatious. She looks fucking beautiful. She also looks like she would rather be anywhere else right now. I can see the tension in every line of her body, the rigid set of her shoulders, and the way her fingers keep curling and uncurling at her sides. She’s fighting herself, trying to maintain the mask of composure she’s constructed. It’s almost admirable.

Beside us, Kierra is practically glowing, her eyes bright with the excitement of witnessing her sister’s fairy-tale wedding. She squeezes Sophia’s hand, whispering about how beautiful she looks and how happy she is for her. Sophia absorbs every word with a strained smile, desperately trying to hide the conflict playing across her face. She wants her sister to be happy. That is, and always will be, her weakness.

My mother stands near the wall, elegant and composed in navy silk, her expression carefully neutral. She catches my eye once and offers a small, almost apologetic smile. I don’t need her sympathy. None of this is her fault. This is simply business—the kind of business that requires witnesses and a marriage certificate.

My brothers occupy the rest of the hallway with their collective presence. Xander leans on the wall, arms crossed, observing everything with that unnervingly analytical expression of his. Kaden, incapable of standing still, paces with restless energy radiating off him. The twins are together, naturally. Beckett checks his phone while Baldwin stretches over to see the screen, their whispered comments earning matching smirks.

“Bennett and Ashford,” the clerk calls, poking her head out from the courtroom.

My hand settles against the small of Sophia’s back, and she stiffens beneath my palm as I guide her forward. The courtroom is small and intimate in a way that feels more suffocating than comforting. The judge, a middle-aged man with kind eyes and a receding hairline, sits behind the bench, shuffling papers with the practiced efficiency of someone who has performed this ceremony countless times.

He doesn’t know what this marriage represents. To the judge, we’re nothing more than another couple stepping before him for a routine legal proceeding. To me, this is the solving problem I’ve had since the night Roman’s will was read.

We stand at the bench, Sophia to my left, the others filing in behind us, positioning themselves as witnesses. Kierra is crying happy tears, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue before the judge even begins to speak. She believes this is a love story, and we all intend to let her.

The judge rattles away monotonously, his words washing over me in a blur—something about love, commitment, partnership, and fidelity. The irony is almost laughable, not one of those things describes how we arrived here. This isn’t about love. This is about control, securing an empire, and taking something because I decided I wanted it.

“Do you have the rings?”

I nod, reaching into my pocket to retrieve the matching platinum bands.

“Do you, Sophia Bennett, take Vance Ashford to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

Her throat bobs, and her lips part soundlessly as she glances at Kierra. For one brief, suspended moment, I wonder whether she’s going to run out on this arrangement.

“I do,” she musters, the words barely audible. Taking her trembling hand in mine, I slide the smaller of the two rings onto her finger. It fits perfectly.

The judge turns toward me. “Do you, Vance Ashford, take Sophia Bennett to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I do,” I answer with certainty as I extend my hand, and she slides the matching band onto my finger.

The judge signs the paperwork before him with a flourish. “By the power vested in me by the state of Illinois, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

My hand shoots up, and I wrap my fingers around her jaw with bruising strength, tilting her face up to mine. I stare down into her gorgeous blue pools for a second before crashing my lips against hers. It’s not a kiss, it’s a claiming. My lips are hard and demanding, my tongue forcing its way past her resistance to take what is mine. To take my wife.

Without warning, she sinks her teeth into my lower lip, biting down with surprising force, copper flooding my mouth as she breaks the skin. Pulling away, I chuckle darkly, genuinely delighted. “Careful, sweetheart,” I whisper low enough that only she can hear, wiping the blood from my lip with my thumb. “Don’t want to bite off more than you can chew.”

Her eyes flash with hatred and defiance.

Maybe having a wife is going to be a little more entertaining than expected.

The reception—if you can call it that—is held at a private club my family has belonged to for decades, a converted brownstone with ivy climbing the brick facade. A jazz band plays in the corner, the saxophone and piano weaving together slow, romantic melodies. Candles flicker on the tables, crystal glasses catching the light over the white linens.

“Consider this my gift,” I murmur close to her ear. “A bit of normalcy on this day for you.” She gives me a look that tells me exactly what she thinks of that statement.

Eventually she’ll learn; the Ashford world has its own definition of normal.

After dinner, the band shifts into something slower and more melodic. I stand and offer Sophia my hand. “Dance with me, sweetheart.”

She hesitates for a moment before realizing it’s not a request. Placing her delicate hand in mine, she lets me lead her to the small dance floor. With one hand at the small of her back and the other clasping her hand against my chest, I draw her close enough to feel the racing beats of her heart.

“We don’t have to do this,” she murmurs, looking anywhere but at my face.

“Yes, we do,” I state simply, waiting to continue until her eyes tentatively lift to meet mine. “Appearances matter, Sophia. You know that. So, pretend to enjoy the first dance with your husband.”